Summertime and the Ohio River 1970s

This photo reminds me of a childhood memory. My b estfriend's mother took us down to the fireworks/riverfest. It might have been the first year WEBN did that. I was either a preteen or early teen. We saw hippy types swimming in the river and jumping off the ice-breakers, We begged to do this but were only allowed to go in right by the serpentine wall and climb right back out. We also saw the same type of people climbing to the top of very high light poles. I think the next year they started greasing them.  

36 Years Ago

On October 25, 1975, Evel Knievel successfully jumped fourteen Greyhound buses at the Kings Island theme park in Ohio. Although Knievel landed on the safety deck above the 14th bus, his landing was successful and he held the record for jumping the most buses on a Harley-Davidson for 24 years. The Kings Island event scored the highest viewer ratings in the history of ABC's Wide World of Sports and would serve as Knievel's longest successful jump at 133 feet (although the Caesars Palace jump was longer, it ended in a crash). After the Kings Island jump, Knievel again announced his retirement. -Wikipedia

In 1975, I was the age my son is now. Back then it seems like we were immersed in a burst of cultural consumerism. I'm not sure if it is gone in general, or just from our family because of our lack of TV, but I wonder what references will remind them of 2011. Will it be anything like Mork and Mindy, Idi Amin, Love American Style, Dean Martin roasts, streaking, dead baby jokes, wacky packages, the Ohio Players? Or will it be more wholesome and serious pursuits like protests in Piatt Park, the Choir Games and Middle Eastern revolts on YouTube?

Mr Rogers at Congress

Fascinating clip

Mr Rogers

I loved this anectdote, but the whole article is worth reading for sure:

...a boy, no longer little, told his friends to watch out, that he was going to do something "really big" the next day at school, and the next day at school he took his gun and his ammo and his earplugs and shot eight classmates who had clustered for a prayer meeting. Three died, and they were still children, almost. The shootings took place in West Paducah, Kentucky, and when Mister Rogers heard about them, he said, "Oh, wouldn't the world be a different place if he had said, 'I'm going to do something really little tomorrow,'" and he decided to dedicate a week of the Neighborhood to the theme "Little and Big." He wanted to tell children that what starts out little can sometimes become big, and so that could devote themselves to little dreams without feeling bad about them...

more Mr Rogers here

My Childhood is Not My Son's

I saw in the paper today that the festival in Pamplona is beginning this week and that they will be running bulls through the street. And if your like me, when you hear the word "Pamplona", you immediately get a picture of Ernest Hemingway in your head. It’s strange how certain words have immediate connection to vivid images.

For example, this week we got our first watermelon. And as I take my first bite of watermelon, I see my childhood friends (two boys, who in this post will remain unnamed). It seems like my brother and I had watermelon at their house all the time in the summer.

An image comes to my mind of us 4 boys, all sitting just outside their front door in the bare dirt where a bush once lived. (This is the same dirt in which we found their frozen cat one February, and the same planter in which we once mutilated a catfish as we tried to de-bone it.) In my mind, we are sitting in the hot shade, in wet cut-offs, with watermelon juice on our chins and our bare feet in the dust of the barren planter. We have seed spitting contests, then spit them at each other, then return, running and jumping back into their rusting round pool.

I was lucky to have an absolutely beautiful childhood. My friends and I had tons of free play time away from any adults. We did everything a kid could want. We were allowed to wander and to experiment and to sometimes get seriously hurt. But it was wonderful, and those memories sustain me to this day.

And as I’ve written before, I sometimes worry that my children are not allowed the same free time. I never did much in the way of organized sports, partly because it would have cut into my freedom. I certainly didn’t relish going to soccer or baseball. In fact I think it was more like dread. Soccer was OK, but I hated running laps or standing at the plate for fast pitch baseball. My son on the other hand truly enjoys his sports. He loves a competitive sport and a demanding coach. Is this is because he does not have the freedom I once had?

My wife and I try to give him as much freedom as a 10 year old can have. No doubt, he has seen much more than I did at his age. He knows how to navigate the city, knows an extremely wide variety of people, and he likes to help me build and repair things.

In the summer, he and his sister live at the swimming pool. They go early in the morning for swim team, and sometime stay until evening. They don’t just swim. They play capture the flag and kick the soccer ball. They eat there and meet new friends there. They do much of what I did, except less dunking and throwing of rocks ... and yes their watermelon is seedless.

So yes, I worry about my son, but I also need to recognize he is not me. He is a different personality, and he is living his own childhood, not mine. And if I step back an look at him growing into a young man... I think he's turning out alright.

Tinkering School

Tinkering School founder, Gever Tulley has a new book: Fifty Dangerous Things (You Should Let Your Children Do). It got a modest mention in the NY Times. I especially like the one dangerous thing: Take appliances apart. I plan on doing this with my son at the next opportunity.

Kid Summer Journal

I think we gave our kids a great summer. And what better gift can you give a kid? Here is some amusing quotes from our son's first page of his summer journal:

First Day of summer break.
On the first day of summer break, when I was dreaming that all the furniture could move and the piano and the nail clippers could talk, and they were messing our house up some, and my sister was fighting some pillows that could move and place mats were flying everywhere. What do you think I did? I woke up.

Then I went in my mom's room and told her about the dream, and then we had fun because we were at the garden and we were working there and then we got all wet with the hose, and we picked some spinach. Then we ate the spinach with peaches and butterfly noodles and I ate mine all up.

Second Day of summer break
On the second day of summer break I cleaned the house a little and the house next door, and it does not look nice in there but I almost finished a room then we ate lunch. Then we went to a park and I met a new friend. Mom bought popsicles and then we went to Graeters and mom bought us some ice cream. Then we went home and watched a movie and then we ate dinner that we picked at our garden. ... and we eat strawberries with chocolate on them and we walked over and we ate crackers and we went to one more place to eat lemon sorbet, and then we went home with a visitor

Not sure if he really had that much sweet stuff on the second day, but I wouldn't doubt it. They are so spoiled.

Globe Worn

They still have this giant globe at the Downtown Library. I can remember the worn spot where Cincinnati should be from visiting as a kid:

Old Radio Shack Catalogs

When I young I spent a bit of time paging through these catalogs, and I think I even had this kit:
 

TV Tennis game:
 

Question Comforts of Your Youth

Q: What do you think it is about the suburbs...that people find comfortable?

A: I think they don’t actually find it comfortable — but everyone is nostalgic for the shitholes of their youth. When we’re young and isolated we don’t know if a place is lousy or not- it’s ours and we are of it, and so we feel a weird closeness. But just as some kids who are abused and beaten think that’s just what growing up is, we ex-suburbanites naturally assume that everyone shared our experience. Many did, but not all.

- David Byrne on bicycles, Atlanta’s sprawl and burying highways

A: ...The thing about many cities — and getting out of the tin bubble — is that they facilitate random encounters, inspirations and connections. That’s how people, being the social animals we are, flourish.

Non-Tech Urban Life

I'm not sure if I am up to an essay tonight, but I've had a thought that I wanted to try to express, and I'll get to it in a round about way, starting with a question.

Who spends more time outdoors: children in the city or children in the suburbs?

You would think that the answer is pretty simple, as one of the key reasons people prefer the suburbs is so that they can have a large yard in which the children can play.

But how much to the kids really use that yard? And how much time do they spend at video games or watching TV? And how much time do they spend as passengers in cars going to malls or the movies?

It just so happened, that I was watching a lecture on Youtube, and the guy referenced this statistic, which I followed up with a Google search. The result is a graph from 1990 showing where 11 year old children in California spent their time. The graph represents an average for all seasons and thus includes the school days but despite California having a temperate climate, the 10% of time spent outdoors does not surprise me at all. In fact I would suspect that today the number is even lower, maybe significantly lower.


But the graph is just a crude way to approach my subject.

Think about when you were eleven years old. What are the places in which you spent your most memorable times? For me they were all outdoors, and they are all times and places that had almost no technology involved. It would be playing outdoors, ice-skating, building forts, pickup baseball, bike riding etc... I do also have some fond memories of this time playing board games and card games inside, but for a child of this age, memories are forged mostly outdoors away from computer screen or TV screens.

While there are certainly exceptions, it seems to me that most suburban children today are raised indoors. And certainly you can do the same if you are living in the city. You can surround yourself with distractions such that you are barely aware of the changing weather outside your window.

But a family can make a conscious decision to not take this path. And an urban household could be one with few electronic devices. And, while you can live downtown, and still drive almost everywhere; if you make a decision that you don't want to live that way, then each walk to the store or to the museum is an adventure.

For example, my kids were pretty miserable walking home Saturday in a downpour. They complained as I extended the trip home to stop for a few groceries. But as usual, they forgot their misery, they loved the puddles, and the banter and the chasing. And when we finally got home they almost begged for a hot bath. And an hour later, completely exhausted they were washed and asleep in a dry bed probably dreaming of the fun they had. (or cursing me, I'm not totally sure)

There are few things that kids really crave. And after a loving, stable family the next craving is just the chance to run, climb and play. And in this century when schools are handing out homework in kindergarten, and organized sports take over most of the evenings and weekends, kids just don't have the chance to explore and play outdoors as was the norm when we were children.

But for many children (and this is certainly true of my son) they have another craving, and that is peace and quiet. I can see my son sometimes, getting frustrated with the constant assault for his attention. And when the chance comes, and he can be quiet, and draw, or walk in solitude, finally, he can clear his head and regain some inner peace. I'm not saying he will be denied use of the computer. No, but it will be limited, and I am thinking of completely ditching the TV, and keeping the radio off... and of course, walking evermore places.

Coaches

I did not play sports much growing up. Well, that's not entirely true, as we played lots of neighborhood baseball and stuff like that. There was a summer or two where we played baseball almost every day. But as far as organized sports I only endured soccer for a couple years, and no other sports. It just didn't interest me, and my parents gave me the choice. Plus I wasn't very good.

But despite my lack of athletic abilities, I remember fondly my two soccer coaches. One was Mr E. I don't think he knew much about soccer, but he was a good man, who gave a lot of his time. He wore cut-off jeans and his son played with us. The other coach, Mr V, was an immigrant who obviously knew the sport well. He had a mentally handicapped son, who was about my age, and the son would help with the equipment etc.. Mr. V was an exceptionally kind man. I remember one particular instance, in which one kid on our team who was overweight was being harangued by the rest of us for taking so long to do his laps, and Mr. V had a talk with us about it. And I am sure that he wanted to be coaching his son, not a bunch of stranger's kids, but his son was not able to play, so he treated us as his own.

I am remembering all this as I sit and watch my son being coached at wrestling. Now this is a sport that until last month, I had never even seen, much less participated in. But my son is much more into this stuff than I ever was, and he asked about wrestling, and it seemed like a good fit. But I sit here and watch these men come in 3 nights a week and organize a whole wrestling program completely as volunteers including Sunday tournaments. And what reminded me of my childhood coaches was when I saw one of the wrestling coaches coming into practice holding a daughter with Down's Syndrome. And he started the coaching session holding her until his wife could get there. And I remembered my soccer coach from 30 years ago, kindly holding his son's hand while he coached other parent's kids.

Why do they do it? They seem to take the responsibility as a fact of life. Whatever the reasons, I really appreciate it. Thanks guys.

Willis Tower

I have not been posting much due to work and tons of family activities, including our recent trip to Chicago. I think the blog may slow down a bit for the next month or so while other things like work, the election, work, soccer, scouts, wrestling, and more work take precedence.

Anyway, we took the kids and stayed in a hotel in Oak Park, and took the El into the Loop to sightsee. We had a fantastic time. I'm sure the kids will remember this trip the rest of their lives. I'll post a few pictures today and tomorrow.

The first thing we did when arriving was go to the Skydeck in what was once called the Sears Tower. It is now called the Willis Tower. They added glass boxes off the side that make for a thrilling view:

Glass Box:
 

View South with streetlights coming on:
 

Rural Childhood

 

Met this kid at a plastic playground inside a Burger King, which was attached to a gas station at a freeway exit in northern Tennessee.

He was alone and said he got to play here all day, and has no friends. His momma's boyfriend works at Burger King and his mom works at a different one across town. He can't see his dad, because daddy's girlfriend showed him some pills, and the police got involved. His momma says when he was little they knew he was tough becaue he would run into walls and not cry. He wants to grow up and be a cage fighter. And he has decided that he only wants to move one last time, after that, no more moving.

Quiet Night Sounds

I'm surprised how cool the evening breezes are even this far into summer. I don't remember it being this cool in June last year. Did you know that we fall asleep to the sounds of crickets downtown? Where I was little, there was a pond not too far from my bedroom window. The sound of the frogs on summer nights was constant and loud. The sounds after midnight downtown are: the cottonwood leaves rustling, midnight church bells, a guy calling to his friend, bike brakes squeaking and the chain rattling as it changes gears, moths fluttering around the sashes, car tires on cobblestones, a ticking engine that needs a valve job, aluminum cans being collected, bats echolocating, and of course the squeal of steel on steel at the rail yards a mile away. Sometimes I can hear the highway, but not tonight. Not sure if it is the vegetation, the humidity or what.

And BTW, there used to be this overwhelming sweet sour yeasty smell that coated the Millcreek valley most days. It was the FL Emmert Company, on Dunlap Street. They take all the spent grains from the breweries and air dry it and sell it as cattle feed. They either stopped processing in OTR or they figured out a way to trap the smell, because our air has been odor free for several years.

Later, past 12:30, I hear a crash. It sounded like a storefront window maybe. I look out and all I see is a cat ambling down the sidewalk. Then two scraggly guys come running down the street with full sacks. They split in different directions. Less than a minute later police come, but find no one. I think they smashed the window at the corner bar and grabbed some bottles. I'll see the damage in the morning.

Shillitos Time

Maybe the first phone number I ever dialed, 721-1700, still functions to tell you the current time and temperature of Cincinnati. Today with cell phones and computers all around us, all keeping the time, it is probably not used very often. But maybe once a year or so it comes in handy...

Happy Fountain Square Day!

Sorry folks, but Queen City Survey reminds us that it's Fountain Square day, and to honor her history, I'm going to bore you with some fond memories of the square.

After sophomore year of high school (1981), I spent my entire summer on Fountain Square clowning around to attract customers for Big Red Q Quick-Print Centers. It was so much fun that it's still hard to believe I got paid for that.

Chris Trapp ran a little company specializing in "unusual advertising." They mostly hired attractive females to walk or roller skate a route through the streets and skywalks of the CBD handing out coupons while wearing sandwich boards. Chris herself wore the Q suit, but then another gig came in that she couldn't resist. She decided my ugly mug wouldn't be a liability under the costume, so I got the job.

IBM had a storefront on the northwest corner of the square (behind Via Vita's current location) showcasing their brand-new line of personal computers. They launched a nationwide ad campaign around a Charlie Chaplin theme, and her new role was to skate around in bowler hat and cane dressed as Chaplin to promote the new technology.

The Apple store at 6th and Sycamore was selling the hell out of the Apple II, and Radio Shack was doing fairly well with the TRS-80. IBM was late to the party, and aimed to dominate the market with its open PC platform. The ill-fated Lisa (predecessor to the MacIntosh) was still 2 years away.

What I remember most is how packed the square was at lunchtime. It really didn't matter if CRC had an event that day, everybody just felt the need to congregate there. Hot dog vendors worked both 5th street corners, Graeters had a cart in the middle, several people were hustling chess games, and every Wednesday at noon a bible thumper shouted out "I've got good news today people," preached for 30 minutes and left. Polka, jazz, bluegrass and swing bands played every few days, the friends of the Library held their annual book sale under tents for a week, and somebody would toss some dish soap into the fountain every few weeks to make it overflow with suds. That place absolutely rocked.

The only time I've felt that vibe since, was after the Reds won the 1990 World Series. My wife (we first met on Fountain Square) worked the phone for several hours to get us tickets to game 1 at Riverfront. After watching them sweep the A's in Oakland on TV, my brother-in-law said, out of the blue, "Let's go to Fountain Square." Apparently half the city had the same idea, because the spontaneous party that erupted was fantastic.

I'm not particularly fond of the new layout of the square. It seems too cut up, too flat, fragmented. I'm never sure whether this is an objective opinion, or just my reminiscience of the old open slanted slab. But I am VERY heartened that the old magic seems to be coming back, and the square continues to vibrate with families and business people, and all other walks of life mingling and enjoying our great city.

Long live Fountain Square!

The 25 Things Tag

Rules: Once you've been tagged, you are supposed to write a note with 25 random things, facts, habits, or goals about you and post it. At the end, choose 5 people to be tagged. If I tagged you, it's because I want to know more about you.

OK, It's been going around, and I almost didn't respond, but what the heck:

1. I don't know the guy, Gerard who tagged me, he must read the blog.
2. I didn't really like kids until I had my own.
3. I still don't really enjoy other people's kids too much, although that is changing.
4. I didn't go to the movies at all last year. Maybe once the year before.
5. I have been inside close-to 100 vacant buildings in OTR and the West End. Some of them are still vacant, some are rehabbed and many have been demolished.
6. I love being on the edge of a high roof, climbing in the rafters or in a dank basement with a flashlight and measuring tape.
6. I never had school spirit but inexplicably I still dislike St X. Same with XU.
7. Our beloved kitty cat died yesterday of kidney failure and old age.
8. I have never had cable or satellite TV.
9. I'm an omnivore, not very green, but definitely a locavore.
10. My dad and both grandfathers worked in factories, in unions.
11. My first memory of music is Mrs Robinson on my dad's AM car radio, WSAI.
12. For a few years as a kid all I did and all I dreamed about was building forts, camps, rope swings and treehouses.
13. We had very cold snowy winters when I was 10-13 years old. Seems like all we did was sled-ride, ice skate and build snow forts.
14. My clique in high school would probably be the wubs.
15. I miss hand drafting and my old drafting board, though I believe it damaged my eyesight.
16. The first time I flew in an airplane, I was 21.
17. That was also the first time I travelled outside the US (to Spain).
18. My work car is 19 yrs old. I want to get to 20.
19. We "met" Barack Obama July 17, 2007, but my camera was broken that day.
20. I met buddy gray in May 1989. I quit working for him 2yrs before he was shot.
21. I still get mad remembering our community garden was once mowed flat by a city contractor.
22. We had no musical instruments in my house growing up.
23. I like to drink a Manhattan after a long day. Sometimes two.
24. I enjoyed my first book when a high school teacher made us read Shogun.
25. I haven't read a complete book for years...since kids and the internet, though I have read parts of many books.

I will not tag anyone else because I never, ever forward these kind of things, but if you are so inclined, go ahead...

"God as my witness, I thought turkeys could fly."

They can, actually, but not very well. The wild ones can fly just enough to get up into a tree at night to avoid nocturnal predators. In daytime they mostly forage for food on foot. Farm-raised turkeys are engineered for bulk, and can't get their fat asses off the ground at all. Perhaps Ben Franklin was right about nominating it to be the national bird.

Some of you are too young to remember WKRP. Back in the early 80's, before Cincinnati was nationally known for race riots, it was known for this silly sitcom. And there was no episode more famous than this Thanksgiving thriller. Anyone you know who's in their late thirties or early forties will remember this vividly. Enjoy.

Smell of Turkey means WEBN

The smell of turkey cooking triggers a pavlonian response to tune into 102.7 to hear Alice's Restaurant. I can't stand the station except for a few moments here and there, and this is one of those moments.

It should be on any minute now.